This week the The justice department has charged a 22-year-old with complaints from the water facility where he worked. It is a serious reminder that while the power grid is attracting the most attention, it is not the only critical infrastructure that is vulnerable to potentially devastating attacks.
We also looked at YouTube’s ongoing issues with moderating content on children; A WIRED investigation found dozens of creepy thumbs on videos Minecraft and child-oriented activities that were above or near the top of the platform’s “Topic” pages. This is not such a dire situation as the so-called Elsagate controversy of a few years ago, in which the YouTube Kids app was flooded with grotesque videos in which popular child characters act unspeakably. But it still shows that YouTube still has a lot of moderation work ahead.
Tired of receiving unwelcome files from strangers, whether through AirDrop or Android version? You can make them stop! And probably should. Just follow our guide to check and check out the different settings needed to close the judgment.
And there is more! Every week we make all the news that WIRED does not discuss in depth. Click on the headings to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.
An organization known as ‘Chicken Drumstick’ allegedly raised $ 76 million in revenue for its video game subscription service before law enforcement broke it up this week. The group charged $ 10 per month for games such as Ear Watch and Call of Duty Mobile. In addition to the seizure of $ 46 million worth of assets (which does not include a small number of luxury cars), police say they destroyed 17 fraudsters and arrested 10 people. The Chinese technology titan Tencent, which has an interest in several large gambling companies, cooperated with authorities in the operation.
A bell ringer told independent security journalist Brian Krebs that a recent breach of the network equipment company Ubiquiti was far worse than initially reported. The source said that hackers “gained full read / write access to Ubiquiti databases at Amazon Web Services”, as well as accessing root administrators to Ubiquiti’s AWS accounts. These are basically the keys to the kingdom. Ubiquiti said in response that it had no indication that the user data had been accessed or stolen, although Krebs’ source said the company did not keep logs that would give them the information in the first place. Anyway, this is a mess!
In January, Google reported that the North Korean hackers of the Lazarus group had spent a considerable amount of energy deceiving security researchers, and that they had even achieved success. This week, the search giant’s Threat Analysis Group followed up, saying the North Korean campaign continues, this time armed with a fake website and fake social media profiles. In an inspired bit of trolling, one of the Twitter puppets was named Sebastian Lazarescue.
It is safe to say that many, many people these days are experiencing pandemic burnout. Think of the men and women of the US Security and Infrastructure Security Agency. After Chris Krebs, the world’s respected leader, was fired by presidential tweet last fall, CISA had to contend with the downfall of SolarWinds and Hafnium, some of the biggest burglary campaigns that hit the US in recent history. Politico reports that the agency’s 2,000 employees are dangerously stretched – which could leave the country badly to deal with the next attack.
This past weekend, the U.S. strategic command – they are the ones overseeing the nukes – tweeted a small string of chatter, prompting some to an understandable question as to whether they were hacked. The good news is that it was not. The less good news is that the child from whoever was logged in to the account had a moment on the keyboard. Just the right mix of adorable and worrying!
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